Opinion
/ Health

After all the talking and all the waiting it was great to finally see the green paper on children's mental health published in December. But it was like unwrapping a Christmas gift from someone who doesn't know you very well: you're excited to get anything, grateful they thought of you, then disappointed that you didn't get exactly what you wanted.

I don't often do more than skim the sports pages, and rarely is there anything of more than passing interest, but a recent article about research on the risks for young people in football caught my attention.

Prime Minister Theresa May devoted her first speech of 2017 to her vision of a "shared society" and in particular to mental health. May promised to use the power of government to transform the way we deal with mental illness not just in our hospitals, "but in our classrooms, at work and in our communities". But of course there was a catch. No new money.

Almost weekly since I was appointed to the post of children's commissioner, a teenager or a parent has told me of the struggle they have had in trying to get mental health support for themselves or their child.